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Alfonso Cuarón’s silent secret about Gravity: Howell column

Conventional wisdom on Alfonso Cuarón is that he knows how to make both small movies (Y Tu Mamá También) and big ones (Children of Men, Harry Potter 3) and he doesn’t mix the two.

Except when it came time to make Gravity, the blockbuster 3D space adventure starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney that opens Friday. It’s the Mexican director’s biggest commercial film to date, with strong Oscar buzz, and yet he almost turned it into an IMAX-sized art project with one daring move.

Sandra Bullock, George Clooney and Alfonso Cuaron on the set of Gravity. (Murdo Macleod / Murdo Macleod)

He wanted to make Gravity a silent film. And he would have, if a well-known friend hadn’t intervened.

“I actually tried it,” Cuarón reveals in an interview during TIFF, where he’s seated next to Bullock on a couch in Toronto’s Shangri-la Hotel.

“It was interesting — believe me, it was really interesting,” he says with a grin. “Imagine that whole opening completely silent.”

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He’s referring to the film’s 12-minute opening sequence — carefully choreographed by Cuarón, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and many computer boffins — in which the universe of Gravity slowly unfolds.

We get awe-inspiring views of Earth as Bullock and Clooney hove into view, arrayed against the inviting glow of the blue planet and the infinite blackness of space.

Why didn’t Cuarón follow his instincts? It wouldn’t have been a shock for Clooney, who experienced outer space minimalism when he remade Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris with Steven Soderbergh in 2002.

Cuarón was indeed ready to make Gravity silent, or at least wordless. Then he heard from his good friend Guillermo del Toro, who at the time was busy making his own blockbuster movie, the past summer’s Pacific Rim.

Del Toro was dead set against the idea.

“Guillermo asked me why I wanted to s--t where I eat. That’s literally what he said. And what he meant was, ‘Look, you have something that is amazing, conceptually it’s amazing. It has to be enjoyed, but you are just alienating audiences with that (making a silent movie).’”

Cuarón took the advice to heart, but he still had his way a little bit with that opening sequence, which approximates a silent movie.

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“The compromise is that there is no sound. Everything is music. But there’s no sound. The only thing you hear as a sound effect is when (the astronauts) interact with objects because of the vibrations that travel.”

There’s also a hint of the beauty of silence in this exchange between Clooney’s Matt Kowalski and Bullock’s Ryan Stone:

Clooney: “What do you like about being up here?”

Bullock: “The silence. I could get used to it.”

The screenplay was co-written by Cuarón and his son Jonas, making it their first official collaboration. They wanted Gravity to be something more than just a thrill ride in space.

“We were interested in the thematic element of it, the metaphorical possibilities of space,” Cuarón says.

“You have one character who is drifting into the void: literally, spiritually psychologically. She’s a victim of her own inertia that leaves her in her own bubble. She’s getting farther and farther away from life and human connection. There’s this journey of this character to reconnect with that.”

Bullock was eager to make the journey, even though she’s terrified of flying — and the special effects required her to do a lot of dangling from wires.

“This character (Stone) is different, she’s unique,” Bullock says.

“You want to build a back story, you want to be in agreement of who she is and who she is not. No one had ever done this before, and that was a rush in and of itself. Alfonso was getting ready to create something that later on in life, when people list off groundbreaking films, this will be one of them . . .

“It was exciting that no one else had done it and there’s nothing to compare it to, even though I know comparisons will be made. So you can explain it, but everybody comes out going, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’”

That’s certainly been the reaction on the fall festival circuit, including TIFF last month, where Gravity had its official North American premiere.

But for all of this talk of daring ideas and groundbreaking visuals, Cuarón also admits that he had something else in mind when he was making Gravity, something son Jonas wouldn’t let him forget.

TIFF RIDES TO THE RESCUE: Star reader and movie buff Michael Grammer had TIFF all planned out last month. He was going to set a personal record of seeing 43 films, and he bought tickets for every one.

Fate and streetcar tracks had another idea. While riding his bicycle from TIFF Bell Lightbox to the Ryerson Theatre to see his 12th movie, Can a Song Save Your Life?, Grammer got his foot caught in the TTC tracks at Queen and McCaul streets, seriously injuring his right leg. He spent the rest of the fest at Mount Sinai Hospital. A full recovery is going to take a while.

This left him holding 32 tickets he couldn’t use, but TIFF rode to the rescue. The festival agreed to reimburse him for all 32 tickets, with no hassles.

“None of what happened was in any way TIFF’s fault or responsibility,” Grammer writes. “Yet it, as a not-for-profit, has still chosen to respond with a gesture of ultimate class and generosity.

“I want everyone to know something about the kind of organization that is behind the festival. I am more committed than ever to TIFF now and because of this, I will definitely be purchasing a membership.”

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